Contraction in business? Listen to this

Let’s get real for a moment—sometimes business doesn’t feel like it’s flowing. Instead, it feels tight, restricted, like no matter what you do, progress isn’t happening the way you imagined. If you're in that space right now, know that it's not just you.

In today’s episode we're diving into the concept of contraction in business. It's that phase where the energy feels stuck, launches don’t go as planned, and growth feels like it's on pause. It can be frustrating, but here's what I’ve learned—these moments of contraction are actually a crucial part of the growth cycle.

Contraction gives us the space to realign, refine, and prepare for the next level. So if you’re feeling like nothing is moving forward, this episode is going to help you see that this phase is temporary and necessary for your expansion. I’ll walk you through how to handle these periods, how to reconnect with your vision, and how to come out the other side stronger and more aligned than ever.

• Listen to the podcast episode "The Power of Detachment and Flow in Business" here
• Listen to the podcast episode "Past Version of You Messing with Your Flow?" here
• Check out my Flow Frequency Quiz here
• Get my 90 Minute Productivity Flow Track here
• Connect with me on LinkedIn here
• Join my Facebook Group here 
• Send me a DM on INSTAGRAM 📸 here
• Follow XORL here

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:15 Melbourne Trip and Flow State Social Event
00:02:14 Importance of In-Person Events
00:03:55 Contraction in Business
00:07:05 Personal Examples of Business Realignment
00:12:11 Contraction Leading to Expansion
00:14:19 Mindset During Contraction
00:15:00 Strategy vs. Energy in Business
00:18:53 Mindset During Quiet Moments

Transcript

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Flow State Business Podcast. If you're new here, a massive welcome. I have just come back from my Melbourne trip where I held an in-person event called Flow State Social. The vision for Flow State Social is I want to be able to take this event all around the world. I am so ready to do more in-person events again. Do you know, it's been a whole year since I hosted my last group. And a lot of it really came from, like I should say, the pause for 12 months was so unintentional. Like as soon as I finished the last event, which was on the Gold Coast, I said to my whole team, can't wait for the next one. We've got to plan the next one. And I don't know what happened. I'm not sure how we landed 12 months later. and hosting the event in Melbourne. But anyway, timing is always perfect. It was unbelievable. I had an incredible opportunity to host at my best friend's studio. It's called the Chillpreneur Creative Studio in Melbourne. For those of you that are based in Melbourne, Australia, it really is such an amazing space to hold events, photo shoots, like Anyway, it's just amazing. Look up Erin May Henry and you'll see her tag for her studio. It is star ning. And the whole event just ran so, so beautifully. I am so indebted to everybody who showed up and just showed up so openly and so embodied and so ready to go much deeper than, you know, like surface level networking events. You know what I mean? Like there are some events you go to and it's so fake and everyone just puts on a mask and it's like, yeah, things are good. Things are good. Like, I know that there is something so special about the Flow State social events because it was almost like an immediate deep soul sister connection. And I would love more guys there by the way, but all the women just ended up showing up on the night, which was unbelievable. And there was just this like really, really cool reminder that I had. I had this like third, you know, what's it called? Third person experience, out of body experience ego. where I just went, you know what, this is why I am an online coach. Yes. And I can do so much through the screen and I can scale the business and reach people from all over the world. And it's unbelievable. But the in-person moments are simply irreplaceable. You know, there's some magic of sharing the same space and the same energy. And there's so much heart to heart connection. Honestly, I am just beyond grateful for everybody who just showed up and I had the best night. I'm so, so grateful that we did it. And it's not easy, you know, planning an event and holding space. And especially if you're traveling for an event as well, like I was saying to Erin and Tegan, who runs the studio afterwards, we were like eating all the leftover food and drinking all the leftover wine. And I was like, how do people like Tony Robbins and all the others who run event-based businesses, Joe Dispenza, How do they do that so consistently and just hold their energy in such a big way? I know that that's a skill that I definitely want to learn. I'll be real with you, the events, whenever I run them, they take a lot of energy from me and I don't know why. I probably need to go to kinesiology for it and just rewrite some belief system stuff, but it took me a whole day to recover. It's Monday now. The event was on Thursday night. I still feel tired from it. It's just what's going on. But it's not like it drained me because it gave me so much. I think it's just calibration of sorts. Anyway, I wanted to also weave this into our theme for today. And I want to talk about the power of contraction when we discuss flow in business. And the reason why this is coming up is because So many conversations on the night was about feeling really contracted in business pretty much for the whole year. A lot of my clients have been feeling that in some form. And I knew that I had to take this discussion a lot further on the podcast. So I know a lot of you are also in a space of expansion and big, exciting things. So come back to this one when it really serves. This is really for those of you who are feeling this sense of feeling restricted and really tight right now. Because if we think about the idea of contraction and especially in the context of flow, contraction is really referring to this sense of like the energy feels really tight. It feels restricted or stagnant. You know, times when there seems to be like nothing is moving forward. Some of you, and I just come off a call with one of my clients and she's like, Ruby, I've done three launches now and I cannot explain why it feels so tough to make even just a handful of sales and conversions. And whilst these moments can be so frustrating, I want you to know that these moments, they're a very essential part of the cycle of growth. Don't roll your eyes at me. I am being dead serious and I have had to hold this energy myself so many times in the six years of business. So listen up. I want to talk about contraction because it's in the contraction where you find so much more realignment. The only reason why you're feeling this way and honestly, for the most part, it's likely because you're ignoring all the big signs that you are rapidly headed towards misalignment in your business. When this happens, it really invites you to have a look at what's going on. what's working and what's not, refining certain strategies, making time for a lot more intentional decision making. And this stuff is not easy because what it is also subsequently saying is we need to take a bit of a pause. we need to take a bit of a slowdown. And you might be going, Ruby, I can't slow down right now because I'm so desperate for the business to work and I need the money and I need the clients and I need it to show me that I'm still meant to be doing this, that the slowdown or the review period, it can wait till I am actually making more sales or it can wait until I have more momentum. But the irony is, That's not going to come through until you take the time to really think about this contraction phase and why it's showing up. And this might be, you know, it doesn't need to be very long, like it really doesn't. But I was saying to one of my clients at the FlowState social event that it could literally be one or two days. This is what we love doing. Michael and I will always book like once a year, a hotel room somewhere, a bit of a staycation and we'll make it a vibe. But at these staycations, we really ask ourselves things like, do we need to rethink our offers? Is it time to revisit the brand messaging? Is it time to refine who we want to actually really work with? And sometimes it happens quite naturally. You'll just notice either clients who you used to love working with no longer really feel aligned and it's nothing that they've said or done. And there's no drama around it. You just feel a sense of it's no longer really the type of person that I want to serve. Actually, one of my clients, Anna, she was talking about how she learned this quite the frustrating and hard way, where she had a client who was just so, so, so draining and so demanding. that it ended up just being a massive tax on her energy. And she's like, Ruby, I now know. I now know that I need to refine my client breakdown and who it is I want to work with. And she's changed her entire business model. She's raised her prices. She's called in a new type of client. And a lot of this takes collaboration with the universe and a lot of it takes calibration with the right frequencies. But when you do take the time out, and she did, she took about six days off the business just to get super clear on it. That was when in her slow down, she was able to clean up so much energetically and shed what no longer served her in her vision. So I really want you to give yourself permission. Like you might even want to do this right now. Open up your calendar. Do it right now. And look at when can you actually take one or two days completely off calls, completely off team meetings, completely off whatever it is that you spend your time on, and when can you actually look at the bigger vision? It might have been a while. And even if it wasn't, if it was like three months ago that you did this, so much can shift in three months, especially if you are still in the contraction. If you're still feeling that sense of it's so difficult and I'm not allowing myself to flow. and that real natural rhythm hasn't come back and you feel this resistance, we've got to do it. We've got to do it again and we've got to do it in a way that isn't necessarily just building off what you'd already done three months ago. Start from scratch because I promise you this is not only going to help you prevent burnout, but it's also going to prime you for the next phase of your expansion. Because with every phase of contraction of feeling like you're just pulling back, there is something so big coming through for you. And I felt this so many times over. You know, there have been moments, especially in the last like a year and a half, where I've had, you know, the lowest income months that I've ever had. And I definitely felt this sense of contraction and worry and fear and anxiety of like, oh no, what if my time is over? What if, you know, the most amazing business that I'd ever built has come and gone? What if I'm irrelevant? What if my clients just don't resonate with where I'm at anymore? Whatever it is, the lies, the vibrational lies that we tell ourselves. And I know that when those moments show up, I am deeply called into the work of looking at where is it coming from? How can I call in the next level of growth, which comes from a place of alignment and of ease? And those stories that might show up, they're only here to show me where it is that I can shift the context. where I can build on my strength and my resilience and my grit? Where is it that I can really grow the business from a place where it's not always looking backwards and wondering how I get to this point where things were so good? I actually recorded a podcast episode not too long ago, and I think if this is resonating, you might want to go and find this one next, but I talk about how the past version of you could be somewhat interrupting your flow. And this is like the concept of you're looking at the version of you who was absolutely kick ass, but you're looking so far back that it's actually messing with your future flow. So definitely go and have a look. It was recorded on the 7th of August and it's called Past Version of You Messing With Your Flow. I might leave that in the show notes below as a follow on from this one as well, because it is always such an interesting discussion. Hi guys, I just want to quickly pop in and I'm hoping you are loving this episode so far. If you have heard me talk about flow and you are wanting and interested and intrigued to learn more about your own flow frequency and the health of your flow state, then you might be very interested in taking the flow frequency quiz. I'm going to leave that in the show notes if you're interested to do that. It's absolutely free. It takes about seven minutes or less to complete. And it's going to give you so much insight into potentially where you can work on so that you can activate more flow in your life and business. Okay, let's head back to the episode. Now, I want to come back to this idea that any time you feel a level of contraction, there's also a signal that is leading you up to a level of expansion. Even when it doesn't feel that way, okay? Even if it feels like things aren't working and there's this very slow external sales thing going on or your Instagram engagement is dipping fast or I don't know, whatever it is that's going on that you're telling yourself it's not working, the way through this phase is to focus on what is thriving. So for example, when I was going through moments where the income seemed a lot lower than what I would have loved to have had, I would look at all of my data. This is where data does come in to play. And let's talk about this. So I actually have a spreadsheet where I track all of my social media growth. It's a bit nerdy, but we love it. So I have the podcast, LinkedIn, Instagram, email list, YouTube, TikTok. Like, am I missing one? Probably, but I will just look at month on month what my numbers are doing and sometimes they dip down. So we're not just sort of going to ignore those ones. Fine. But you know, there's moments where I will just say, I want to look at what is thriving. So the podcast has been doing really well, attracting more listeners than ever. Woo. LinkedIn engagement is literally through the roof. Unbelievable. They're loving my photo posts. They're loving my captions. It's really resonating with my LinkedIn audience. That's amazing. And my client retention. So whilst it might seem as an example that sales are slowing down, my client retention is actually at the highest it's ever been. meaning more effortlessness, meaning that I don't need to sell as hard externally because 50K months, 100K months are coming in because my clients are staying on or they are switching the type of coaching program they're in, they're leveling up. That's amazing. These signs of growth are often indicators that the expansion is actually already happening. just maybe not necessarily in the obvious places or where you want it to show up. And that's the thing. Sometimes we say, oh, we really want it to show up in this form and in this way, but that's not big picture thinking. Because when nothing seems to be going well, that's when the real test of your mindset comes into play. And that's where the energy work comes into play. You know, as they say, strategy is literally 20%. When someone comes to me and they say, Rupes, I really need your strategies. I love your strategy. What are you doing? Give me your funnels. Give me the way that you're selling. I want scripts. I want the perfect way that you're forming your Instagram and LinkedIn posts. And I would love to see what emails you're sending exactly. Date, time stamp. And I just have to be like, well, can we just slow our roll? Because it is 20% of the game. You could do the exact same thing that I do. And trust me, I've had. A few of my clients tried to really emulate that. And they'll say to me about a month later, Ruby, it's not working. I don't know why. And I'm like, I do. Because you are basing your entire success model off my energy. And that is not your energy. There's going to be things that I'm doing. If I'm doing a free class every four to six weeks and you're someone who your energy is not meant to lie there, of course, you're going to feel burnt out. Of course, you're going to feel, you know, completely exhausted. So here's the thing. even when nothing is going well. So you might be saying to yourself, just as I said, you know, look at what's going well, look at the podcast, look at the LinkedIn stats, look at your Instagram stats, and you're just like, Rebs, it's so depressing, everything's going down, like there's nothing going well. This is where the mindset that the energy of expansion is always at work. It's just that you can't always see it immediately. This is where detachment becomes even more powerful. If you haven't learned about the law of detachment, this could be a real calling to that. There is something so effortless and fearless about how to actually connect to detachment in a certain way. I actually recorded another episode on the power of detachment and flow in business. And we deep dive into how detachment works to attract more of what you want. So I'll leave that linked below as well as the third follow-up, because this is just one big series of energetics as a seven-figure, multiple seven-figure coach. And I know so many of you just really appreciate the mindset stuff, but also how someone who has achieved up to a certain level in business thinks in a contraction period. So this is it. This is the work. And just because you can't see it immediately, the truth is the periods when things feel really hard, and this has been so true for me, is often right before the breakthrough. It's like the universe is actively clearing the space for us to help us allow more of what we want to come through. And that energy is really hard to hold because what that clearing space could mean is maybe clients are finishing up with you and those are the clients that are simply not meant to come along to the next version that you're calling in for yourself, nothing to do with Whether they're great clients or bad clients, there's a lot of clients of mine who have finished up in the last, I don't know, year and a half, and they are like some of my best friends in business, but I'm just not meant to coach them anymore. And that's allowed room for so many more. I've said this on many podcast episodes, I hold the energy of around 70 clients month on month. And that could be my masterminds, group programs, one-to-one, voxer only, it goes on and on. But in my membership, in my mini mind, there's about 70 individuals that I work with and I love that. I'm so grateful. Now, this wasn't always the case. In 2018 to 2019, it was purely all one-to-ones and I had maybe five clients a month, 10 clients a month, and that was great. And then I said to the universe, I want to scale, I want to go global, and it cleared out all those one-to-one clients to make room for my group efforts and to make room for my masterminds. And that was so scary because all of my one-to-one clients finished up and it was a period of contraction. It was a period where I felt like it was so hard, but that's when the breakthrough happened. In the seven-figure mindset, I really want to share this with you. There is this peacefulness that comes from understanding that the quiet moments are just really temporary. They don't even affect you. They don't define your worth. There's no messaging in there that disrupts the fear around your business's potential. In fact, you find a lot of power in the pivot. And I've spoken to a lot of my girlfriends who are seven, multiple seven figure business owners, and they think exactly the same way. It's like, oh, well, yeah, it's pretty, you know, it's shit, like things are quiet. But at the same time, there's no real deep. sense of fear and frustration. And don't even go there. Don't even start to think, oh well, great for them because they're earning multiple seven figures and they've got all this money. For the most part, a lot of multiple seven figure business owners are still very much reliant on their monthly income because the expenses are really high. We have team, we have tech, we have advertising. We have branding, like there's so many outgoings that you don't even really think about that as a seven figure multiple seven, you're still. very much relying on the monthly income. And of course, there's variations of that. There's people who have great amount of savings and they have a really beautiful blanket of financial comfort. But what I'm saying here is that in the quiet moments, they know that it's a time to look inward, to chill, to ask themselves, what stories am I telling about my situation? What beliefs am I holding that are holding me back from seeing the bigger picture? And even in those moments, The contraction gets turned around really fast. So they don't stay in that for a year or two years. They stay in that for like a month maybe. And let's be real. It's not about forcing positive thinking because that's not what I'm here for, especially when nothing seems to be going well, but it is about creating a space to reflect. It is about seeing where the pivots need to happen. It is about trusting that the things will improve because you're meant to do this work. Do you understand that? There's no part of why you're being called to do what you do and not be supported in that. You're always supported. The energy of expansion is always at work. In these moments, flow is going to look very different and the flow is going to look slower, but it never stops. Flow never stops, universal law. But it does mean taking that step back. It does mean where do you need to recharge? It does mean where do you need to let go of some energetic weights or plug in those energetic leaks? They could be people that are working for you, they could be people that are in your life, they could be clients that's just sucking so much energy from you. And this is that moment of you get to create that fresh momentum, all right? So I hope that this has really helped. The energy of contraction is here to serve. When you are going through moments where it feels small, tight, hard, you know, stagnant, plateauing, let's work on seeing what is working. So this bit of a recap, let's work on Believing, understanding, speaking out that even if it seems that nothing is going my way, I know that the energy of expansion is still at work. And just notice what's going on in the physical body. So if you're getting, you know, sick a lot, your muscles are cramping up, you're feeling just lethargic and very, very low, obviously, you know, there's physical things and that's for sure, but when you are going through a level of contraction, these things can show up in a very physical way in your body. Obviously, go and see your physician if you need to go see a doctor for that. But I also highly recommend, alongside checking out what you need to with traditional doctors, to go see energy healers. That can mean so many things to so many people. Take it however you will, right? It could be your Reiki healer, kinesiologist, a pastor, a therapist, whoever it is who works with the energy, it will take things so much further for you. Okay. Let me know if this resonated. I'm holding you through this contraction. I'm sending out the most amazing, expansive vibes. My intention is that this episode is here to help you see what's real, what's possible, what is the truth right now. And I really hope it served. Let me know over on Instagram at underscore Ruby Lee underscore if this is something that you really needed to hear at the moment. I am so proud of you. I'm so happy that you're going through this journey. You are so meant to be here. People need your work. I cannot wait to see what you do with this energy. OK, until next time, I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye, my loves.